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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Herman 'Ray' Davis is exhibiting at a coffee shop in Saratoga... these are striking... I was drawn to them immediately...

The artist celebrated his one hundredth birthday on Monday, and most of the work in the show is from fifty+ years ago. He started painting in the army, then became a dentist, and at some point befriended an artist named Maurice Grossman. Grossman gave Davis painting lessons... the woman in the two kitchen pictures is Grossman's wife, Tanya, painted in 1952.

Tanya Grossman is maybe better known as Tatyana Grossman... the woman who started the printmaking business which became known as Universal Limited Art Editions. Her impact can't be overstimated... this is the woman who convinced artists like Rivers, Johns, Rauschenberg, Hartigan, Dine, Frankenthaler, Newman to come to her Long Island workshop and try making prints... the whole artform of contemporary printmaking is indebted to her, if not the entire artmarket for legitimizing the concept of editions.

These Davis paintings, both called Tanya's Kitchen, were made a few years before Maurice had the heart attack which prompted Tanya to start her business. Ray later recieved artist proofs in exchange for dental work.

4 comments:

vc
said...

These are lovely, which is an adjective I hesitate to use, because it sounds patronizing, but I don't mean that.Convincing, not only by today's nostalgia-heavy standards, but by 1948 standards as well (not that I was around). It's hearfelt and formally courageous. Dig the Joseph Albers kitchen chair.